Towards world-class clusters in the European Union

Abstract

This Communication "Towards world-class clusters in the European Union: implementing the broad-based innovation strategy" outlines, for the first time, an EU-level perspective on how to accelerate the development of more competitive clusters. It calls for more excellence and cooperation at policy and business level so that Europe's strengths can be better leveraged into market success at global level. The proposed actions range from improving existing instruments such as the European Cluster Observatory (cluster mapping) and the European Cluster Alliance (cluster policy dialogue) to new actions aiming to raise the excellence of cluster organisations, fostering trans-national cooperation between clusters and improving the framework conditions for cluster development in the EU market. There is no European cluster policy as such but a wide range of support actions that, if used in an intelligent and more strategic manner, can have a profound impact in support of regional and national efforts to build stronger clusters in the EU.